Report Says Stanford Is First University to Raise $1 Billion in a Single Year

Stanford last year became the first university to raise more than $1 billion in a single year, according to the Council for Aid to Education’s annual college fund-raising survey.

Partly because of large donations from entrepreneurial alumni who have made their fortunes in Silicon Valley, Stanford has been the top fund-raiser for eight straight years.

Last year, the university, near Palo Alto, said its five-year capital campaign, which ended in December 2011, had taken in a record-setting $6.23 billion, far exceeding its original goal of $4.3 billion, and surpassing by more than $2 billion any other single higher-education campaign.

“Stanford has been doing a remarkable job,” said Ann E. Kaplan, the director of the council’s report. “By any standard, it’s been amazing. They have some very big ideas, and they’re good at capturing people’s imagination, thinking about what they can do and what they could be.”

The report, released Wednesday, found that colleges and universities in the United States raised $31 billion last year, or 2.3 percent more than in 2011, slightly ahead of the inflation rate. That is still slightly less than the $31.6 billion record, set in 2008, before the financial crisis cut deeply into charitable giving.

“What happens in higher-ed fund-raising does tend to mirror what goes on in the economy as a whole,” Ms. Kaplan said. “We haven’t come out of this recession as fast as some previous ones. The will to make the gifts is there; now we just need the value of the underlying assets, of individuals and foundations, to come back.”

Together, the top 10 universities raised $5.3 billion of the $31 billion total.

Among public universities, the University of California, Berkeley, was the leading fund-raiser, bringing in $405 million.

The $1.035 billion in gifts to Stanford last year comes to about $56,000 for each of its 18,500 students.

According to the council’s report, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, a specialized health institution, raised the largest amount per enrolled student, $590,719.

Of the 20 institutions that raised the most per student, five are medical schools and five are schools of theology. Deep Springs College, a private two-year college in California, is fourth on the list, which also includes two private liberal arts colleges, Hillsdale College in Michigan and Amherst College in Massachusetts. The remaining six institutions are private research universities: Stanford, Yale, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton and Harvard.

The report found that in the 2012 fiscal year, contributions for current operations increased 6.2 percent, while gifts for capital purposes, like endowments and buildings, declined 3.2 percent.

After Stanford’s fund-raising success, other institutions have upped their ante: Columbia, which announced a $4 billion campaign in 2006, has collected more than that, and raised its goal to $5 billion by December 2013. The University of Southern California has started a seven-year, $6 billion capital campaign.

It is a truism of fund-raising, Ms. Kaplan said, that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Correction: February 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Stanford University. It is in Stanford, Calif., not Palo Alto. The article also misstated the date of when their five-year capital campaign ended. It was in December 2011, not Dec. 31, 2012. Also, the announcement was made last year, not earlier this month. The article also misstated the total amount of funds raised by Columbia. It was $490 million, not $400 million.

A version of this article appears in print on February 21, 2013, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Says Stanford Is First University to Raise $1 Billion in a Single Year. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe